Warren Ellis on GI Joe?

Well, that's one we didn't see coming.

Warren Ellis writes on his website about writing an hour long GI Joe animated treatment, called GI Joe Resolute. It's being broken into 10 5 minute episodes with a 10 minute final episode and should see release onto the web sometime in 2009.
But as usual with Warren, his telling of the genesis of the project is worth reading just for the laughs contained. Choice quotes:

It went like this. Sam Register phoned me up and said, we’d really like you to write a GI JOE animation, at a PG-13 rating, aimed at an older viewer. I said, I’ve never seen a GI JOE cartoon in my life. The closest I got to a GI JOE comic was drinking with Larry Hama. I’ve never even seen a GI JOE. Couldn’t tell you what they look like if you paid me. I know nothing about GI JOE. It is meaningless in my world.
Excellent, Sam said. Just the guy we need.
It was hard not to notice, at this point, that Sam Register is crazier than a shithouse rat. Therefore I decided to take the job.

It went like this. Sam Register phoned me up and said, we’d really like you to write a GI JOE animation, at a PG-13 rating, aimed at an older viewer. I said, I’ve never seen a GI JOE cartoon in my life. The closest I got to a GI JOE comic was drinking with Larry Hama. I’ve never even seen a GI JOE. Couldn’t tell you what they look like if you paid me. I know nothing about GI JOE. It is meaningless in myworld.

I was told, some time after I finished the job, that GI JOE is actually kind of similar to Action Man. "Why didn’t they SAY so?" I yelled. Eagle Eyes! Gripping Hands! The Red Devil Action Man who had a hideous accident in a tree during a parachute op in my back garden when I was three years old. The mutilated Action Man whom my grandad found in a lay-by and thereby became default Torture Sequence Action Man for several years. Ah, the 1970s, where setting action figures on fire in the woods was considered part of a healthy childhood.

"Ask them if GI JOE and Barbie can have a really disturbing sex scene where they get naked and then realise they don’t have any genitalia," said my girlfriend.
Everyone was so helpful during this project.

The idea was, as I understand it, that bringing in a writer with absolutely no nostalgia for the property would give them the tone they were looking for. I think they were happy when I presented them with the initial list of characters I was going to just kill. And then the list of things I was going to blow up.
The people at Hasbro were actually remarkably supportive. And I did apologise after shouting at them those times. And they did give me one of those conversations that you never really expect to have when growing up:

HASBRO: No, Warren, you cannot wipe Beijing from the face of the earth.
ME: Shit. (pause) What about Moscow?
HASBRO: Wiping Moscow from the face of the earth would be fine.

Well worth a read.